POOLS
235
POONA
Bishop of Xeo-CiBsarea by Phsedimus, Bishop of
Amasia. It is said that at that time there were only
seventeen Christians in the city and its vicinity, and
that at his death, shortly before 270, only the same
number of heathens could be found in the city. The
able bishop converted the people by opposing Chris-
tian to heathen miracles and by changing the old
feasts into Cliristian festivals. In the Dccian persecu-
tion he made concessions to human weakness, advised
the faithful to be less aggressive, and fled himself.
Comana received a bishop from Gregorj'. Christian-
ity obtained a foothold also in the Greek cities of the
coast of eastern Pontus before 325. In or about the
year 315 a great synod was held at Xeo-Cifsarea by
Bishop Longinus. At the Council of Xiciea there were
present among others the Bishops of Amastris, Poni-
pejopolis, Jonopolis, Amasia, Comana, Zela, Trebi-
zond, and Pityus. Towards the end of the fourth
century Xeo-Caesarea became itself a Church-
province, having as suffragans Trebizond, Cerasus,
Polemonium, Comana, Rhizaeum, and PitjTJS.
Meyer. Gesch. d. Konigreiches Pontes (Leipzig, 1S79) : Kleff- NER. D. Britfwechsel zwischen Plinius u. Trajan (Paderborn. 1907); Papauichalopulos, Ilepiijyijo-ij eis Tbi- aovTov (Athens, 1903); Le Quiex, Oriens christianus, I (Paris, 1740), 499-520; Ramsay. The Church in the Roman Empire (London, 1893), 211, 235; Harxack, Die Missionu. Ausbreitung d. Christentums in den eraten drei Jahrhunderten, II (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1906), 73, 157-S,
Klesiens Loffler.
Pools in Scripture. — In the EngUsh Bibles, the word pool standsforthreeHebrew words: (1) 'agam means properly a pond of stagnant water; in Ex., \-ii, 19; viii, 5, it designates probably sheets of water left in lowplaces bj' the Xile from the inundation; (2) miqveh signifies originally "the gathering together" of the waters (Gen., i, 10), hence a place where waters flowing from different directions are collected to- gether, a reservoir being usuall}- formed by damming up the valley; (3) berehah (comp. .Arab, birket) is an entirely artificial reservoir generally excavated in the rock and covered inside with a fining of masonrj- to prevent leaking. These three words convey a fair idea of the way the natives of Palestine and neigh- bouring regions have at all times secured a sufficient supply of water, a precaution by no means unim- portant in countries where drj' weather prevails for the greater part of the year. Xatural pools of the kind described in Scripture by the name 'agam are practically unknown in Palestine. If importance be attached to the vocabulary of the sacred WTiters, we might be justified in supposing that mo.st pools were wholly artificial, for all are indiscriminately styled berekah in the Hebrew Bible. Yet there can be no doubt that some were reservoirs obtained by building a dam across vallej-s; such was, at any rate, the Lower, or Old, Pool (Birkfl el-Hamra, south of Jerusalem), which, before the Upper Pool (Ain Silwan) was con- structed, was filled from the Gihon (the Virgin's Fountain) by a surface conduit, along the eastern slope of the spur of Ophel, and later was fed from the surplus water overflowing from the Upper Pool.
The other pools in or about the Holy City were all entirely artificial, being excavated in the rock. Those mentioned in Scripture are: (1) the Pool of Siloe (A. V. Siloah; II Esd., iii, 15; John, ix, 7), or Upper Pool (IV Kings, x\-iii, 17; Is., \-ii, 3; xxx\'i, 2), or the King's Pool (II Esd., ii, 14), built by Ezechias "between the two walls" (Is., xxii, 11), to bring into the city through an underground conduit, the Siloe tunnel, the water of Gihon; (2) the Pool of Bethsaida (A. V. Bethesda; John, V, 2); the exact location of this pool is to this day an object of dispute; commonly but quite ground- lessly it is identified with the Birket Israil. north of the Temple and south-west of St. Stephen's Gate (BabSilli Marynm) ; others (Conder, Paton etc.) see it in the pool at the Fountain of Gihon {'Ain Sitti Maryam), south- east of the Haram — the berekah 'asuijah (i. e. "well
made") of Xeh. (II Esd.), iii, 16; others finally think it
should be sought some distance north of the Birket
IsraUandwestof St. .\nn's Church and recognized there
in old constructions still suggesting the form of porti-
coes; (3) the Berekah 'asuyah of II Esd. has just been
mentioned; it was the reservoir of the intermittent
spring of Gihon; (4) we should perhaps cite also the
Dragon Fountain of II Esd., ii, 13, which laj- between
the \'alley Gate (practically the modern Jaffa Gate)
and the Dung Gate (about due west of the southern
end of the Birket es-Sulian) ; probably connected with
the Dragon Fountain was the Serpent's Pool men-
tioned by Josephus (BeU. Jud., V, in, 2), but the site
of both is now a mere matter of conjecture. Despite
the historical interest attached to them, it is needless
The Pools of Solomon
Now known as EI Burak
to recall here the various pools of the Holy Land more or less incidentally mentioned in Scripture: the Pool of Gabaon, which witnessed the bloody encounter of the servants of David with the defenders of Saul's dj-n- asty; the Pools of Hesebon, and finally the pools al- luded to in Eccl., ii, 6 as being the work of Solomon. These are supposed bj' some to be the famous Pools of Solomon (about eight miles south of Jerusalem) from which several winding aqueducts, one forty-seven miles long, brought the water into the city.
Baedeker-Benziger, Palestine and Syria (Leipzig, 1906); Bliss. Excavations at Jerusalem (London, 1S9S): SIastermax, The Pool of Bethesda in Biblical World (Feb.. 1905) : Pal. Explor. FrXD, Quart. Statement (Oct., 1896; Jan., 1397); Idem, Jerusalem; P.vTOX, The Meaning of the Expression" Between the Two Walls" in Journ. of Biblic. Literature. 1 (1906); Idem, Jerusalem in Biblical Times, particularly c. iii. The Springs and Pools of Ancient Jeru- salem (Chicago, 1908); Heidet, Belhsalde in ViG.. Diet de la Bible; ALattss, La piscine de Bethesda a Jerusalem (Paris. 1888); Vincent, Les murs de Jerusalem d'aprls Nehemie in Revue Biblique (1904), 56-74.
Chables L. Souvat.
Poena, Diocese OF(PtiN"Exsis),in India, comprises that portion of the Bombay Presidency which fies on the Deccan plateau as far north as the Tapti River, that istosay thecollectoratesof Poona, Ahmednagar, Xasik, Kandeish, Sholapur. Bijapur, Satara, Dharwar, a portion of Belgaum, and the Xative States of Kolha- pur, Miraj, Sangfi, and others of less note, but exclud- ing Savantwadi, a portion of the coUectorate of Bel- gaum and the whole of Xorth Canara, which belong to the Archdiocese of Goa. It is bounded on the east by the Dioceses of Xagpur, Hyderabad, and Madras; on the north it touches the Prefecture Apostohc of Rajputana; on the west the fine of the Western ghauts divides it from the Diocese of Damaun and the Archdiocese of Goa; and on the south it is contiguous to the Diocese of Mysore. It includes one detached portion of torritor>- at Barsi Town surrounded by the Diocese of Hyderabad, while at Poona there is one exempted church belonging to the Archdiocese of Goa. ■Phe Catholic population is numbered at 15,487 under the jurisdiction of the bishop, omitting those who are
